St John’s Smith Square announces Spring/Summer programme

London concert venue St John’s Smith Square has revealed details of its Spring/Summer 2024 season. The upcoming programme will include jazz, comedy nights, a Ceilidh, and family events as well as a season of performances by the venue’s own ensemble, British chamber orchestra Southbank Sinfonia.

The season is set to kick off on 18 January with a concert combining the forces of Southbank Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia in a programme of Copland, Bernstein, Mozart, Stravinsky, Lindberg and Grainger for woodwind, brass and percussion. This will be followed on 20 January by a concert celebrating the 10^th anniversary of Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar with a performance from Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-nominated score by Roger Sayer, the organist who originally recorded the film’s soundtrack, before taking the programme on a world tour. Burns Night (25 January) will be celebrated at St John’s with a programme of Scottish Dances and music inspired by Robbie Burns culminating in Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony and followed by a post-concert cèilidh.

In February the venue’s #ConcertLab series brings together classical and folk music while in May, Southbank Sinfonia teams up with jazz guitarist Rob Luft and jazz bass player, composer and arranger Misha Mullov-Abbado an evening of jazz-classical fusion. St John’s Thursday Lunchtime Concerts will continue to provide a platform for emerging artists alongside established names, and later in the season the Easter Festival and the London Festival of Baroque Music will return to the venue.

Southbank Sinfonia joined forces with St John's Smith Square in 2021, forming a combined organisation Southbank Sinfonia at St John's Smith Square. At its home in Westminster the charity provides an annual fellowship programme, providing orchestral training and development to 33 emerging musicians, incorporating workshops, projects and community engagement initiatives.